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Comment by xupybd | Hacker News Reader

Is cooking with gas really that bad compared to using coal or gas to fuel a power plant that then supplies electricity to your stove? With the losses in efficiency converting heat to electricity, then the losses transmitting it to your house I'm not sure.

Yes we have renewables to generate electricity but sadly they don't cover demand during the peak time when most cook.

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Losses from the plant to your home average 5% [0] If the electricity is generated in a combined cycle gas plant you get about 64% efficiency [1], so the actual efficiency is about 60,8% if you take the losses into account. A regular electrical stove is 82% efficient (this plummets to 40 if the pot doesn't cover the heating area) and an induction stove 76%. [3] A gas stove has about 40% efficiency (fig 8) [2]. In conclusion, assuming your cooking pot covers the heating area, electrical heating has 44% efficiency and is therefore 10% better than gas. This is not all that needs to be taken into account though, a sibling comment already mentioned this but we also need to take additional issues into account such as pollution due to incomplete combustion. This is a big issue inside densely populated cities, so a reduction is usually very welcome.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-8904(03)00074-8 [3] https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2014/data/papers/9-7...

Cooking with natural gas is detrimental to indoor air quality (https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602...), and improving indoor air quality is specifically called out as a motivation for the new restrictions in the article. And as far as natural gas usage patterns, I believe most natural gas is used for heat and hot water, with the amount used for cooking being relatively small.

About 51% of California electricity consumption is from hydro, nuclear, and renewable sources (https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...). On top of that, many new electric heating systems would probably use heat pumps, which bring in 2-4 times as much heat into the house relative the the amount of electric energy consumed. In combination, that means that even accounting for transmission and generation losses, using electric instead of gas heat in new construction should result in significant savings in carbon emissions.

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